The World at Her Fingertips
by whitchry9
Summary: Apparently she was named after her mother, but she's not sure why. She could probably ask him, but he has enough secrets. And while he never lies to her, he doesn't always tell her the truth. Like about who shot him. From the pov of the Watson daughter. Six parts.
1. Chapter 1

Her first memory is being at the aquarium, staring into the face of a shark. She could remember that he didn't like the sharks, saying they unsettled him, reminded him too much of...  
So mummy and daddy took her away from there and they all went to look at the rainbow fish instead.

She remembers her sixth birthday clearly.  
Her parents had given her a doll that opened and closed its eyes, would eat from a spoon, and would wet a nappy. It was quite clever, but looking back, she really wasn't old enough to be a mummy. He gave her blocks with elements on them, stack them up the right way and they'd make a periodic table. (She didn't find that out until much later though.)  
They had ice cream cake with her initials on it.  
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGRW.  
It was mint. It was delicious.

She realized she wasn't quite like other children by the age of eight, when he'd talk to her about science and history instead of playing pretend and colouring inside lines. She liked it.  
Her parents sighed at him, told him that he should just let her be ordinary, but he insisted there was no point in being ordinary when she could be extraordinary.  
She liked the sound of that.  
Her parents let him continue, sighing loudly occasionally, but with a certain fondness.

Her parents were interesting. Most people in her life were all rather interesting, especially him, but her parents were hers, and that made them special enough all by itself.

She loved music, and the music that was spoken words. There didn't always have to be a melody to them.  
That being said, she did still love music. He would play her violin for her, and it was so lovely. She wished she could, but her hands were still too small, and that was one thing that he wouldn't let her touch. She loved classical, and instrumental, and singular songs here and there, not one specific band or group, because that would have restricted her, and that was the last thing she wanted. She consumed music, enjoyed it like it was fine cuisine and she was starving.

She loved poems, but only the read out loud kind. Her head was already too full for them to echo around in it like they should have, like the way they did when someone read them out loud in a room, echoing off all the different people and all the spaces they had inside of them.  
She liked to listen to other people's, and fit them to her, would read them out loud in her room to an audience of one, being herself, just to see how they sounded.

Her papa is a worrier.  
Her mama is a warrior.  
And she's the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.

No, that's not right.

Her mama is a worrier.  
Her papa is a warrior.  
And she's the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.

No, that's not right.  
They're both warriors. But that doesn't mean they can't be worriers. Because they do. They worry about every little thing, things that shouldn't even be thought of, they worry about.  
Because that's what they do. They're warriors and worriers, and you aren't excluded from being one just because you're the other.

They fit each other perfectly in that respect.  
She's still not sure how their genes combined to make her though.  
She should probably ask him. He'd know.  
(Makes a note to herself, adds it to the ever growing list. Every time she asked him one, it seemed to only lead to five more. It was a bit counter productive, but she loved the way his eyes would light up when he talked about something, hands flying through the air and he tried to paint pictures with his hands.)

She was named after her mother, apparently, which she didn't quite understand, since her mother had a different name. But there was a lot of things she didn't understand, and she'd come to accept that, knowing that if she wanted to, and if she tried hard enough, she could find out. Knowledge was so magical that way. It was always out there, waiting for her to stand on her tippy toes to reach it.  
She loved how it made her feel to always be stretching for more.

She never really sticks with one name. Her parents gave her three, so why shouldn't she change based on her mood?  
Some days she feels like an Annabelle, sometimes she's an Anna, or a Belle, others she feels like a Gracie, other days she feels like a Rebecca, or a Becca.  
And some days she doesn't feel like any of them, and won't respond no matter what she's called.  
After those days are done, she tells them that she was in her mind palace, searching for herself, and only just found her.  
(She got the mind palace from him, even though hers is nothing like a palace, not like she thinks his is anyways.)

* * *

AN- The poem bits are taken from Sarah Kay's 'If I Should Have a Daughter'.


	2. Chapter 2

She loves her parents. Most of the time, anyway. She was eleven years old, she couldn't love them all the time, that would just be silly. Sometimes she just had to stomp her feet and yell that she hated them and storm off to her room and slam the door, crying behind it until she just felt silly and waited to hear the footsteps of one of her parents in the hallway.

But they were pretty good. She had to admit that.  
Some of her friends at school only had one parent, or their parents didn't live together. Or worse yet, she thought, they did live together, but they hated each other.  
At least she knew her parents loved each other. They fought sometimes, but it was about stupid things, like who was mowing the lawn (it always ended up being her mother, for reasons she didn't yet understand) or who left the milk out (usually father, although sometimes it was neither of them, which amused her to no end) and they always kissed and made up at the end.  
Her entire family was pretty great.  
They weren't really all her family, strictly speaking, but mum told her that family didn't end with blood, and she really truly believed that.  
She loved them, after all, and if love didn't make them family, she didn't know what did.

She had uncles and aunts, and grandparents that weren't really hers, but she didn't have any of her own, so they were as good as.  
And then there was Sherlock.

She didn't really know what to call him.

He was father's best friend, and probably could have been an uncle. He was uncle Mycroft's brother.  
But he wasn't like that. He was almost like another dad.  
If her dad acted like a child half the time.

He was funny. He always said things that made her laugh, and he looked confused about it most of the time, but she knew that he loved to see her laugh. Sometimes she wondered how much of it was just an act to get her to laugh, since she usually laughed even harder when he looked confused. That was the problem with Sherlock. Sometimes he was too clever for his own good.

She probably appreciated him most of all. He never talked to her like she was stupid, never told her to go away because he was busy, never lied to her, ever.  
Of course, he didn't always tell her the truth, but that was different from lying.  
Sometimes she would ask him questions that he did want to, or maybe couldn't, answer, and he would just get very quiet and focused on whatever he was doing.  
She learned not to ask about those things, because his response never changed.  
But he never lied. She appreciated that about him. There were so many other things too, like how he'd always take the time to explain to her what he was doing with his latest experiment, how he'd sneak her pictures of crime scenes to see what she could make of them, even though her parents weren't very fond of that, but Sherlock knew how much she loved it. She wanted to be like him when she grew up, a detective, solving murders and crimes and doing experiments. Never having to do anything she didn't want to.  
She told Sherlock this once, and he laughed at her.  
She asked why, and he tapped her on the nose and told her she didn't need to grow up to do that. Growing up was overrated.

Sometimes she thought that he was her best friend. She had friends at school, but they weren't the same. They liked talking about boys and their hair and stealing makeup from their mums to try out.  
(She didn't bother telling them that her mother had already shown her how to apply makeup, to make her eyes stand out, to make her lips fuller. She didn't tell them how her aunt had sat her down and attempted to talk about boys, mostly just blushing every other sentence. She didn't tell them about how she saw Sherlock twirling his hair around his finger one day, absent mindedly while reading a medical text, and was fascinated at how it bounced back, no matter how many times he pulled on them. she didn't tell them much of anything really.)  
They didn't want to talk about blood splatter analysis and politics in the middle east and how there had been new fossils discovered in Canada.  
So she mostly didn't talk. She sat, and listened, and laughed, and played with them, but she was more of an observer.  
She quite liked anthropology as well, and sometimes she felt like a researcher immersed in the observation of a foreign species. The preteen girl.

But she could talk about anything with Sherlock. She could probably talk for days, until she fell asleep from the sheer exhaustion of it, and he would still listen.  
Dad would tell stories about how, back when they were flatmates, Sherlock would never listen to anything he said, how he filtered them out, and had Mrs Hudson on semi-permanent mute.  
She felt special for never being ignored. But then she also wondered what made her so different.  
When she looked in the mirror at herself, she could never tell if there was anything unique about her.  
Her hair was blonde like her mother's, and her eyes were the same colour as her father's. She'd twist her head around, sucking in her cheeks and looking at her face from every angle. She couldn't see anything special. Nothing extraordinary.  
Perhaps that was the biggest mystery of life. Even one that she couldn't solve.


	3. Chapter 3

She told her parents she was old enough to not need a babysitter after school, but they insisted, and so Sherlock picked her up every day from school.  
Well, mostly every day. The days he didn't have cases.  
She supposed more often than not it was Mrs Hudson who picked her up.  
But she didn't mind. Either way she was taken to Baker Street.  
She loved it there. Father and Sherlock had lived there together for years, and sometimes she swore the memories were so engrained in the walls that she could hear them, leaning against a wall, breathless and giddy after a chase. Sometimes she could feel the sadness too though. She knew all about what Sherlock had done. Even if her parents hadn't talked to her about it (which they did, only after she brought it up) it couldn't be erased from newspapers and the lives of almost everyone she knew.  
Because almost everyone in her life had been touched by what Sherlock had done.  
Uncle Greg and Uncle Mike and Auntie Molly and Grandpa and Grandma, who were Sherlock's parents, but the closest thing she had to grandparents besides Mrs Hudson, and even Anderson, who she wasn't even sure what to call him. All of them had been affected by what Sherlock had done.  
Of course, her father was the most. They were best friends. (Some days he would just be sitting quietly, and she thought that she could see the pain in his eyes, even though it was so many years ago now, so long ago that Sherlock had left him. She supposed some sorts of pain never got better with time, and always made sure to hug him extra tight before bed, just to reassure him that she wasn't going anywhere, and neither had he.)

But she supposed that if Sherlock hadn't done it, her parents never would have met, and she would never have been born.  
Some days, when Sherlock looked at her with something like awe on his face, she wondered if he was thinking about that.

She should probably have been frightened of him. He was that sort of man, all tall and imposing and sharp angles. But she just couldn't fear him.  
After you've heard tales of someone in Buckingham palace wearing only a sheet, you really couldn't look at them in that sort of light again. Besides, he'd never been anything but gentle to her. She had no doubt that he could be cold and harsh and unrelenting when he needed to be, there was just something about him that she could sense, hidden away whenever he was around her.

People were interesting like that, she supposed. Sometimes what you saw was only what they wanted you to see.  
Sherlock was a brilliant actor. She could see how carefully constructed he was around other people, around most people. But with her and her parents, he was different. The carefully presented front fell, and behind it was a wonderful person.  
She wasn't sure why he didn't let people see that, but she knew that he had his reasons. And even if she didn't understand, she would respect them.  
Respect was important in relationships.


	4. Chapter 4

For her tenth birthday, Sherlock gave her a chemistry set. Her parents weren't very pleased, she could hear them muttering in the background, but Sherlock reassured them that he would supervise her.  
"Like that's a relief," her father muttered, but she ignored him, fascinated by the manual explaining the different kinds of chemical reactions.

They did experiments after school on the days he didn't have cases. He never took her out with her, which made her sad, but she knew that both of her parents would, and could, kill him for doing that. It wasn't a risk that she was willing to take. Sometimes he would show her photographs of crime scenes, take her to the morgue, even a crime scene once, only because Mrs Hudson was out of town. (He made her wait with Uncle Greg by his police car. It was a bit dull.)

* * *

For her eleventh birthday, Sherlock gave her a microscope. Her very own microscope. She'd used Sherlock's before, but this one was all hers. She wasn't sure she'd ever loved an object so much before in her life. (He also gave her more chemicals to top up the chemistry kit, but he did that in secret, because her parents really didn't need to worry more than they did.)

The next week Sherlock picked her up from school with a mad glint in his eyes, one that she knew meant he was planning an experiment. He didn't speak to her until they were at the flat, and then only

Vinegar and baking soda. Classic. She knew what would happen, understood the chemistry behind it, but this time they were running a series of experiments, changing the amounts of both and mixing them up in little containers, seeing how long it took for the lids to pop off.  
She knew Mrs Hudson wasn't going to be happy, but it had mostly been contained. Sherlock had built some sort of plastic shelter out of containers that had probably been stolen from Mrs Hudson's kitchen and stuck together with tape.

The mixture had been more volatile than the others, and the lid popped off before Sherlock could even close the door to the makeshift shelter. The fizzy mixture sprayed onto his shirt and face, which was thankfully protected at least a bit by the goggles.  
"Oh," he said. "Take note of that one."  
She obeyed, dutifully making observations on the notepad for that specific combination.  
"Ugh," he said, sniffing his shirt. "I smell like chips." His fingers went to the buttons and began undoing them. "I'm taking this off before I turn into a pickle, or whatever the human equivalent is." He examined her. "Did you get any on you?"  
She giggled. "Nope."  
He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and dropped it on the counter.  
While he was sifting through the foam for the lid, she spotted something.  
She shifted on the stool so she was kneeling on it, freeing more of her body to reach across the island, taking care to avoid the puddles of vinegar.  
"What's that Sherlock?" she asked, tracing her fingers on his skin. It was a small round mass of scar tissue, raised on the edge, like a crater that a little asteroid had landed in on his skin.  
"I was shot," he replied.  
"And this?" she continued, trailing her fingers down his side, along the pale white line leading from the crater.  
"Surgical scar."  
"Is there an exit wound?" she asked, pulling at him to get him to spin for her.  
"No," he answered shortly, resisting her tugs. He shouldered his wet shirt again. "I'll just go... find something to wear," he muttered, backing away from her touch.  
She watched him go, and wondered why he didn't want her to see his back, but didn't say anything when he got back.

She asked her mother about it.  
"Mummy," she began. She called her mummy when she wanted to sound younger, because maybe her mother would underestimate her and give her the answers she was looking for. Her mother was far too clever for that, but she lived in eternal hope.  
"Yes darling?"  
"Who shot Sherlock?"  
Her mother paled, and nearly choked on her tea.  
"What do you mean?"  
"I saw it," she said. "We were doing an experiment and he got his shirt wet. He took it off and I saw the scar. Right... here," she said, pointing on her own body. "And the one from surgery too." She traced a line down her side. "He wouldn't tell me who did it. Do you know?"  
She shook her head. "If Sherlock didn't want to talk about it, then I'm not going to."  
She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. There were tears in her eyes waiting to fall, but she did her mother a kindness and pretended not to see them.  
Sherlock had taught her about that. Not really directly, but in a sort of round about way.  
For someone who claimed to be a sociopath (which she knew was a lie lie lie), Sherlock had taught her a lot of things about people and feelings and loving.

* * *

Of course Sherlock loved her daddy. She didn't know how everyone else couldn't see it.  
But it took her far too long to realize that they did see it. They just didn't say anything because it was kinder.  
She still really hadn't gotten the hang of not pointing everything out, that some secrets just shouldn't be spoken, that's why they were hidden away in the way they smiled or the lines on their face when they didn't.  
Sometimes truths hurt too much to come out again, and it was better to keep them hidden away, even if they ripped holes in your heart little by little. Because little holes were still better than a gaping wound.


	5. Chapter 5

She found out where Sherlock had gotten the gun shot wound from two months after her eleventh birthday.

She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. It just sort of happened. She was going to ask father to read her a story, because she couldn't fall asleep, and that always helped. She'd crept halfway down the stairs before hearing something that made her stop and crouch, hidden away to listen.

"She's been asking about Sherlock," her mother said quietly.  
Father sighed. "Of course she is. She's clever and it's interesting."  
"But what are we going to tell her? What did he tell her?"  
There was a moment's silence before her father spoke again. "Sherlock won't lie to her. So he won't have told her anything."  
"That doesn't answer my question," mummy said quietly. "What are we going to tell her? You know she won't stop."

They were both quiet for a while, and she could picture them, father's arm wrapped around mummy, her head on his shoulder, both just thinking.  
She was about to leave when father spoke up.  
"What about the truth?"  
Mummy let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Oh John. It took you so long to forgive me. You really think she will, especially considering her attachment to Sherlock? If I thought losing you was bad, losing her would be even worse. And I will lose her. I absolutely will lose her if she knows I was the one to shoot Sherlock."

Logically she knew all the air couldn't have been taken from the room, but her lungs told her otherwise, collapsing in on themselves. The only thing that kept her from making a sound was knowing they would hear her, and then they would want to talk. And she couldn't talk. She wasn't sure she could remember how to, with all the anger that was crowding her mind.  
She scurried off to her room once she could breathe again, and threw herself onto her bed, tears staining the pillow.

They lied and lied and lied. She wondered if anything she'd ever been told was the truth. Surely Sherlock had never lied to her. She wasn't sure if he was even capable of that.  
She didn't know what to be called that week, and didn't respond to anything anyway.  
She wasn't sure who she was anymore, didn't know how to fit the pieces of herself back into who she thought she was.  
_Her own mother had been the one to shoot Sherlock. To kill Sherlock.  
_She sobbed an awful lot that week, ugly gasping sobs where she couldn't catch her breath. But she made sure to do it when no one could hear.  
She'd learned that from her parents. Not to show any weakness.

But she didn't talk to them about it. Only spoke to her father when it was necessary. Yes and no, no she didn't want cereal for breakfast, yes she was fine, obviously. _Not really though, but I'm not telling you.  
_She refused to speak to her mother for a week, until Sherlock had found out what was going on, and sat her down.  
"Annabelle Gracie Rebecca Watson. What is this I hear about you being rude to your mother? That is my job."  
(Sometimes she wondered if he'd like her names better if they were switched around, so it would spell ARG, like a pirate. But then he should have told her parents that before she was born, since it was a little late now.)  
She didn't reply, hoping he would leave.  
She knew he wouldn't though. He just pulled up a chair and sat across from her, waiting for her to speak, like he knew she would eventually. Sometimes she hated him for that, because he always knew what to do, even when she didn't want him to know. But he knew if he waited long enough, she would speak.  
And she did.  
"Mummy shot you," she said flatly. "I found out that she was the one to shoot you."  
"Oh," Sherlock said quietly.  
"I just found out that my mother shot you and all you have to say is 'oh'?" she snarled.  
He sighed. "Is that what this is about? I suppose it was inevitable, although I was hoping it wouldn't be until you were a bit older..."  
She only glared at him. "She could have killed you!"  
"She did kill me," he corrected. "But she also saved me."  
She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"  
"Which part," he replied. "I did die, technically, because my heart stopped. But she also saved me by calling the ambulance."  
"You want me to believe that she shot you, then called an ambulance? That doesn't make any sense," she scoffed.  
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "I've never lied to you before and I'm not going to start now. But I'm also not going to tell you the whole truth. But know this. Your mother is a brave, kind, incredible woman, and is one of the best women I've ever known. Quite near the top of the list in fact. She had her reasons for shooting me, and I forgave her for that, before she even forgave herself." He softened, and she watched his expression with interest. "I'm still not sure if she has forgiven herself." He straightened up again. "But that's something you'll have to talk about with her."  
She wondered who the other women were that Sherlock so admired, but suspected it wasn't the best time to ask.  
"Everyone makes mistakes, Miss Watson. Don't you forget that." He stood up, ready to leave.  
"Why didn't you want me to see your back?" she asked quietly.  
He startled. "What?"  
"When I saw the scar, I asked if there was an exit wound. You said no, but wouldn't let me look at your back." She looked up to study him. "Why?"  
"That scar is not the only one I have," he said carefully. "There's a lot about my past I haven't shared with you, or even with your father."  
He kissed the top of her head before straightening up.  
"You know I'll never lie to you Annabelle Gracie Rebecca. But that doesn't mean I have to tell you everything." He paused in the doorway. "Perhaps someday," he said.  
He winked at her before leaving.  
"I'm still angry you know!" she bellowed after him.  
"I know!" he called back. "Ask your mother why she's the one to always mow the lawn!"  
She considered that. She'd always known there was something going on there.


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock must have spoken to her father, because that night when he tucked her into bed, he climbed in as well.  
"This is my bed daddy," she told him.  
"I know Gracie."  
She felt like a Gracie that day, sort of. More than she felt like anyone else. Sherlock had asked earlier, always considerate of her wishes, but had only used her full name. Full names meant he was serious.  
(She knew his full name, even if he hadn't told her. But she was saving it up for something good.)  
"Then why are you in it?"  
"I thought we could talk," he said.  
She tugged the blankets out from under him and pulled them up to her chin. "We can talk anywhere, you know."  
He nodded. "I was thinking we could talk about your mother?"  
She frowned at him. "You spoke with Sherlock, didn't you."  
"Of course. He's my best friend."  
"I know about what mummy did."  
He sighed. "I know. I figured we'd need to talk about it. You haven't been doing a lot of talking lately."  
She tilted her head at him. "There weren't really any words that fit."  
"No," he agreed. "I suppose there wasn't."  
"There's nothing stopping you from talking," she told him. "So get it over with, or get out of my bed."  
He nodded. "Okay. Well, first of all, I'm not Sherlock," he murmured. "I may lie to you, but it will be for your own good. You know that, right?"  
She sighed. "I don't like being lied to daddy."  
He considered that. "Alright. I'll try to tell you as much of the truth as I think I can."  
"I'll be okay daddy. It won't hurt me."  
"No darling, it will hurt me."  
Oh.  
She nodded and waited for him to begin.  
"The time after Sherlock's death was very difficult for me. That was when I met your mother..."  
She settled in for the story, eager to absorb every bit of it.  
Her father told her about Sherlock's 'death', his period of mourning, his attempt to move on, meeting Mary, working, falling in love, proposing, and Sherlock's surprising return. Daddy was so angry at Sherlock for that, not the returning part, but being gone for so long. He still was angry, she could hear it in his voice, raw and open, like a wound that kept having the scab pulled off. He talked about the wedding and Sherlock's best man speech, and how a month later, their world came crashing down around them because of a case. He didn't give her details, but he didn't need to, because the important part was the blackmailer and mummy shooting Sherlock.  
Because mummy wasn't just a nurse. She was a spy. She had killed people, probably loads of them, but had never told daddy that. And she thought she never could. And she was willing to kill to make sure he never did find out.  
It awed her a bit, how deeply her mother loved her father, to go to such lengths to never lose him. Of course, it was also a bit scary, because mummy was willing to sacrifice Sherlock. _Sherlock.  
_She was still unsure of how to feel about that when daddy continued on with the tale.

"I still don't know all the details of who your mother was, or what she was, and it doesn't matter. Because she's not that person anymore. So it took me a while, and a lot of thinking, and a whole bunch of conditions, but I did come to terms with it."  
"Is that why she mows the lawn?"  
Her father laughed at that. "Yes, that's why she does. I was angry at her for a very long time, not all the time, but in bits, and that was one way I showed it. I told her she could mow the sodding lawn."  
She smiled and snuggled into his shoulder.  
"But I love your mother. I really do. I did then, and even after finding out, it didn't change my feelings. I was angry, so very angry, at what she did to Sherlock, and it took me a long time to forgive her, but I have. As much as I can anyway. Oddly enough, Sherlock was the one who forgave her first, despite being the one who was shot."  
"He's funny like that," she sighed.  
Daddy smiled. "Indeed he is. He's a very special man, and we're lucky to have him."  
She figured this was the only time she could get an answer from him, so she asked. "You really love him, don't you daddy?"  
He was silent for a moment, but sighed, and answered. "Yes, I really do. Don't go telling him that though, his head is swollen enough already."  
"It's okay," she said happily. "He already knows."  
Her father smiled at her and untangled himself from the covers to stand up.  
"Good night darling," he said, kissing her on the head, in the same place where Sherlock had.

She didn't think she'd be able to sleep that night with all the new information swimming around in her head, but it had apparently exhausted her, because she fell into a dreamless sleep.  
It took her a couple more days to make sense of it all, to sort it out into what she was calling her mind park. Not as fancy as a mind palace, but with more outdoor space to let the facts grow and flourish.  
She came back to them a few days later, trimmed them down, picked them and safely stowed them away in a room.  
She'd come to her decision. It was going to take her a lot longer to express that decision, for all those feelings, because they could only come out so much at a time, and like daddy, she was going to be angry, and it would come out in bits and pieces, but she'd decided to forgive mummy. Father was right about a lot of things, and so was Sherlock. Her past didn't matter anymore, and she did what she did for a reason. Maybe it was a reason she didn't like, but she understood it. Love did funny things to people. She'd learned that from Sherlock, not that she was going to tell him that.  
But she would forgive mummy, but not forget, because all the bits that happen before make you the person you are, even if you try to forget them.  
Annabelle Gracie Rebecca Watson wasn't going to forget that.

Because by god, she had a soldier and a doctor for a father, and a nurse and a spy for a mother, and the rest of her family was made up of the world's only consulting detective, the British government, and their parents; a man who never stopped believing; a man who always came; a woman who always mattered; a woman, who, despite all claims not to be, kept them all in order; and her.  
She was going to make it.  
(And if she wasn't, she was almost certain that Sherlock would help her take over the world. But that was plan B.)

* * *

**AN: So I may have written a sequel to this. It should be started posting shortly after this one finishes.**


End file.
